Das Buch Ochlah W’ochlah Frensdorff

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Topics: Massora, Massorah, Masorah, Masora, Frendsdorff, Bible, Bibel

Collection: opensource

Language: Hebrew

During the Masoretic Period, independent Masoretic treatises were written, separate from the Masoretic notes transmitted in the margin of manuscripts. Although the material contained in these treatises no doubt originated in the marginal annotations made in manuscripts, these large collections were independent collations, transmitted separately or at the end of manuscripts.

The largest and best known of these treatises is Okhlah we-Okhlah. This collection contains about 400 lists, and the treatise gets its title from the first word-pair in the first list. The lists are a mixture of ancient and recent material, making the date of the treatise difficult to determine. Dotan contends that it was not edited before the tenth century, while Yeivin argues for the ninth century.⁴³ Most of the lists are known from other sources, but the material in Okhlah we-Okhlah is more exhaustive.

The lists are arranged alphabetically, and most of the material is topical (that is, the lists deal with the Bible text by topic instead of in the order of the text). Some of the lists are simply fairly routine categories (e.g., Qere/Ketiv), but others fall into the category of what Yeivin calls “collative” masorah.⁴⁴ Although collative masorah can take different forms, two frequent types of lists are a) words or phrases which are different (and frequently hapax) but share some common category or detail, and b) pairs of words which are similar but differ from one another in some detail. An example of a) is list 72 in Frensdorff’s edition, listing words which occur in doublets (i.e., the same word repeated immediately). An example of b) is the first list, an alphabetic list of pairs of unique words, the first one without prefixed vav, the second with prefixed vav.

Okhlah we-Okhlah was known and used for many centuries, even up to the time of Jacob ben Chayyim and Elias Levita (discussed below). However, after that time the treatise appears to have been forgotten, for we no longer find references to it until recent times. In 1864, Frensdorff published an edition of it based on a manuscript found in Paris.⁴⁵ Another edition was published in 1975 by Diaz-Esteban based on a more comprehensive manuscript found in Halle.⁴⁶ Both of these are cited in the Masoretic apparatus of BHS; the Frensdorff edition is referenced by “Okhl” and the Diaz-Esteban edition by “Okhl II.”

In addition to Okhlah we-Okhlah, fragments from other treatises of this type were found in the Cairo Geniza. In fact, before the discovery of the Cairo Geniza, Okhlah we-Okhlah was the only treatise of this type known to exist. It is possible that some of these treatises are very old, and they, or others like them, were used to collect Masoretic material in the time when it was not allowed to write the material in the margins of scrolls. Some of the Geniza fragments contain collections of material in the order of the biblical text, while others, like Okhlah we-Okhlah, are topical.⁴⁷

⁴³Dotan, “Masorah,” col. 1428; Yeivin, Tiberian Masorah, p. 130.

⁴⁴Yeivin, Tiberian Masorah, pp. 78–80.

⁴⁵S. Frensdorff, Das Buch Ochlah Wʾochlah (1864; rpt. New York: Ktav, 1972).

⁴⁶E.F. Diaz-Esteban, Sefer Oklah we-Oklah (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificos, 1975).

Okhl S. Frensdorff, Das Buch Ochlah Wʾochlah. 1864; rpt. New York: Ktav, 1972. (See the section “Independent Masoretic Treatises” in Chapter 2.)

⁴⁷For more information on this material, see Yeivin, Tiberian Masorah, pp. 127–28.

Kelley, P. H., Mynatt, D. S., & Crawford, T. G. (1998). The Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: Introduction and annotated glossary (21). Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.